Cucina Espresso in Concord sits at a happy midway point between home and Buttercrumbs Croissant, our favourite bakery in Sydney. It’s a cafe offering an Italian style brunch menu.

We start with drinks. This is the Long Black ($4.00). As far as coffees go, this one was decent with prominent notes of bitterness and acidity but not better than the Nespresso pods.

This is N’s Extreme Toffee Coffee Freezocino ($7.00). This tasted like an iced coffee but blended to form a slush. N enjoyed the notes of sweet notes of the vanilla ice cream with the hint of coffee in the background.

This is the Lamb Pie ($18.00), with lamb shanks slow cooked for 5 hours, lentils, black truffle, potato mash, English baby spinach, porcini mushrooms and parmesan cheese.

We were all impressed by the height of T’s dish when it arrived only to be slightly deflated on realising the giant puff was simply sitting atop the actual pie that was far less impressive. The pie itself, though, had a deep umami flavour from the black truffle, porcini mushrooms and parmesan cheese, while the lamb itself was fall-apart tender. More filling and less pastry poof would’ve hit the spot.

This is the Chilli Chicken Burger ($19.90), with twice-cooked marinated chicken, avocado, cheese, lettuce, bruschetta mix, chilli sauce and aioli served on a bun with fries.

The dryness of the chicken breast left D disappointed, as did the reliance on sweet chilli sauce that did not give his burger the promised heat he was after. The fries tasted as if they were baked in the oven and lacked seasoning for the moreish burger and fries experience.

This is the Croquette Salmon Benedict ($18.50), with chef’s house-made rice potato croquette, topped with double smoked ham, poached eggs and house-made lime-infused hollandaise sauce.

Croquettes are an easy drawcard for N and me and we could not pass these up. The rice potato croquette featured a crispy outer shell that held together the risotto-like interior, which had a warm and nutty parmesan flavour. The smoked salmon added a smooth and deep savoury quality that was cut through with the acidity from the hollandaise and the sharpness of the basil. It’s an amped-up eggs benedict, and surprisingly filling for its relatively small size.

On the whole, we enjoyed the food at Cucina Espresso and would return if we were in the area.

Cucina Espresso is located at 89 Majors Bay Rd, Concord NSW 2137.